DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Remarks
This Office action is considered fully responsive to the amendment filed 07/28/2026.
The previous specification objections are withdrawn in light of Applicant’s amendments.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 07/28/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues the prior art does not teach the final limitations of the amended independent claims due to the term “otherwise” (page 6, Remarks).
Examiner respectfully disagrees. Examiner cited VIVO at page 4 to teach “the unicast PDSCH and the group common PDSCH are processed, at least based on the UE is capable of receiving the unicast PDSCH and the group common PDSCH which are frequency division multiplexed” (“UE is configured to receive unicast PDSCH and multicast PDSCH in a slot in FDM manner”). Examiner also cited VIVO to teach the limitation “and one of the unicast PDSCH and the group common PDSCH is processed, otherwise” (page 4, “for the case a UE is configured to receive more than one multicast PDSCH in a slot in FDM manner, the UE may also need to construct the HARQ-ACK codebook for different multicast PDSCHs separately”).
Examiner notes that the second case is clearly distinguished from the first, as the prior art specifies it as a unique situation (i.e. equivalent to “otherwise”) using the phrase “for the case.” The prior art specifically discloses this case pertains to a multicast (i.e. group common) PDSCH reception, where each (i.e. one) PDSCH multicast reception’s codebook is constructed (i.e. processed) separately. Hence, this unique case of only multicast PDSCH being received (and not both unicast PDSCH and multicast PDSCH as the prior limitation) is disclosed by VIVO.
Applicant argues the claims addresses a technical problem not contemplated by VIVO (pages 6-7, Remarks).
Examiner states this is not necessary for a rejection under U.S.C. 102. Per MPEP 2131.05: "Arguments that the alleged anticipatory prior art is ‘nonanalogous art’ or ‘teaches away from the invention’ or is not recognized as solving the problem solved by the claimed invention, [are] not ‘germane’ to a rejection under section 102." Twin Disc, Inc. v. United States, 231 USPQ 417, 424 (Cl. Ct. 1986) (quoting In re Self, 671 F.2d 1344, 213 USPQ 1, 7 (CCPA 1982)). See also State Contracting & Eng’ g Corp. v. Condotte America, Inc., 346 F.3d 1057, 1068, 68 USPQ2d 1481, 1488 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (The question of whether a reference is analogous art is not relevant to whether that reference anticipates. A reference may be directed to an entirely different problem than the one addressed by the inventor, or may be from an entirely different field of endeavor than that of the claimed invention, yet the reference is still anticipatory if it explicitly or inherently discloses every limitation recited in the claims.).
The claims stand rejected as in the Claim Rejections section below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 16, 18-20, 23 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by "Discussion on mechanisms to improve reliability for RRC_CONNECTED UEs," 3GPP DRAFT; R1-2104388, 3RD GENERATION PARTNERSHIP PROJECT (3GPP), MOBILE COMPETENCE CENTRE ; 650, ROUTE DES LUCIOLES ; F-06921 SOPHIA-ANTIPOLIS CEDEX ; FRANCE, vol. RAN WG1, 11 May 2021 (2021-05-11) [provided by Applicant] (“VIVO”).
As to claim 16, see similar rejection to claim 23. The apparatus teaches the method.
As to claim 18, VIVO further discloses the method of claim 16, wherein: based on one of the unicast PDSCH and the group common PDSCH being processed, a PDSCH to be processed is determined based on a priority between the unicast PDSCH and the group common PDSCH (page 5, “for the priority comparison between multicast and unicast with the same priority index, for simplicity, the HARQACK for multicast with priority index 0 can equal to the HARQ-ACK for unicast with priority index 0, and the HARQ-ACK for multicast with priority index 1 can equal to the HARQ-ACK for unicast with priority index 1”).
As to claim 19, VIVO further discloses the method of claim 18, wherein: the priority of the unicast PDSCH is indicated by downlink control information (DCI) related to scheduling the unicast PDSCH (Page 7, “Priority index can be included in DCI formats scheduling the group-common PDSCH. Similar mechanism as priority indication of unicast HARQ-ACK can be reused, that is, for the dynamically scheduled PDSCH. Priority index can be included in DCI formats scheduling the group-common PDSCH, if there is no priority index indication in the scheduling DCI, the priority index is 0.” , i.e. the DCI without index still indicates the unicast being 0); and the priority of the group common PDSCH is indicated by DCI related to scheduling the group common PDSCH (Page 7, “Priority index can be included in DCI formats scheduling the group-common PDSCH. Similar mechanism as priority indication of unicast HARQ-ACK can be reused, that is. for the dynamically scheduled PDSCH. Priority index can be included in DCI formats scheduling the group-common PDSCH, if there is no priority index indication in the scheduling DCI, the priority index is 0.”).
As to claim 20, VIVO further discloses the method of claim 16, wherein: the group common PDSCH corresponds to a multicast semi-persistent scheduling (SPS) PDSCH based on an SPS configuration index which is activated (page 4, “For type 2 HARQ-ACK codebook, the codebook construction depends on the scheduling scheme for groupcommon PDSCH. In the previous meeting, it was agreed to separately count DAI for unicast and DAI for multicast and the first Type-2 HARQ-ACK sub-codebook for unicast precedes the second Type-2 HARQ-ACK subcodebook for multicast.
For the case of SPS PDSCH, there may be unicast SPS PDSCH and multicast SPS PDSCH”; page 5, “For SPS POSCH/SPS release, the priority index is RRC configured per SPS configuration” ).
As to claim 23, VIVO discloses an apparatus for a user equipment (UE) in a wireless communication system (page 1, NR…UE), the apparatus comprising: at least one transceiver for transmitting and receiving a wireless signal (page 1, UEs to receive Broadcast/Multicast service; UL feedback); and at least one processor for controlling the at least one transceiver, wherein the at least one processor is configured to (It is known in the art that a UE has processing hardware to control functions of the UE including those of an antenna): receive a unicast physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) in a slot (pages 3-4, “FDM-ed unicast PDSCH and multicast PDSCH”; “HARQ-ACK codebook construction for FDM-ed unicast and multicast in the same slot”); receive a group common PDSCH which is frequency division multiplexed with the unicast PDSCH in the slot ( pages 3-4, “FDM-ed unicast PDSCH and multicast PDSCH”; “HARQ-ACK codebook construction for FDM-ed unicast and multicast in the same slot” ); and process both the unicast PDSCH and the group common PDSCH based on the UE being capable of receiving the unicast PDSCH and the group common PDSCH which are frequency division multiplexed (page 4, "UE is configured to receive unicast PDSCH and multicast PDSCH in a slot in FDM manner"); and
process one of the unicast PDSCH and the group common PDSCH, otherwise (page 4, “for the case a UE is configured to receive more than one multicast PDSCH in a slot in FMD manner, the UE may also need to construct the HARQ-ACK codebook for different multicast PDSCHs separately”).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 21 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over "Discussion on mechanisms to improve reliability for RRC_CONNECTED UEs," 3GPP DRAFT; R1-2104388, 3RD GENERATION PARTNERSHIP PROJECT (3GPP), MOBILE COMPETENCE CENTRE ; 650, ROUTE DES LUCIOLES ; F-06921 SOPHIA-ANTIPOLIS CEDEX ; FRANCE, vol. RAN WG1, 11 May 2021 (2021-05-11) [provided by Applicant] (“VIVO”) in view of U.S. Publication No. 2022/0046678 A1 to YANG et al. (“Yang”).
As to claim 21, VIVO does not expressly disclose the method of claim 20, wherein: the slot is located after a timing of activation of the SPS configuration index.
Yang discloses at para. 0160: A method of wireless communication performed by a user equipment (UE), the method comprising: identifying one or more semi-persistent scheduling (SPS) physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) transmission occasions in a slot; receiving, from a base station (BS) and via a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH), a semi-persistent scheduling (SPS) activation downlink control information (DCI) configured to activate at the UE a SPS configuration, the SPS configuration including a configuration index and configured to schedule a SPS PDSCH transmission occasion associated with the configuration index; and activating or reactivating, in response to the receiving the SPS activation, the SPS PDSCH transmission occasion associated with the configuration index based on: a separation in symbols between an end of the SPS activation DCI and a start of an earliest SPS PDSCH transmission occasion of the one or more SPS PDSCH transmission occasions in a same slot as the SPS PDSCH transmission occasion associated with the configuration index.
Prior to the effective filing date of invention, it would have been obvious to a
person of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the configuration index of Yang into the
invention of VIVO. The suggestion/motivation would have been for management of overlapping SPS in PDSCH occasions (Yang, para. 0002). Including the configuration index of Yang into the invention of VIVO was within the ordinary ability of one of ordinary skill in the art based on the teachings of Yang.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Note: Examiner cited this prior art in a previous Office action.
US 2023/0337233 A1 discloses at fig. 39: PDSCH group indexes pertaining to DCI, with ACK feedback.
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to OMAR J GHOWRWAL whose telephone number is (571)270-5691. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:00am-6:00pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, ASAD NAWAZ can be reached at 571-272-3988. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/OMAR J GHOWRWAL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2463
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